As a part of security awareness month, I have mentioned that we really need to focus any preventative mention awareness on laptop theft. As a part of that, I have been working on some interesting research around this threat. There is a ton of information out there on laptop theft. This wikipedia article has a lot of good information. It is a great place to start if you want to build some quick materials. I love the cost estimate of $89,000 on average per lost laptop. This aggregates the work it takes to recover from the loss, the hardware cost, the aggregate average of fines and regulatory losses, etc. That number is a real eye opener for many people who tend to only think about the hardware replacement costs, which is especially true for end users. Also, in my experience, we have timed some of our security engineer ninjas on how long it takes to break a car window, snatch a laptop and bolt. One of our quickest ninjas takes under 12 seconds to get 100′ from the vehicle. Even rounded up to an even 20 seconds, that is not very likely to matter. Timing how long it takes people to go into a convenience store to pay for gas or grab a soda is almost always in the 3-5 minute range. That’s a lot of time for 20 second intervals to occur.

Just something for you to give end users to think about…